Sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle


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If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. The makers of the SodaStream and Primo Flavorstation devices would love for their customers to use nothing but their own flavor syrups. By the very nature of these devices, though, it's easy to use other flavorings.

The major obstacle is simply finding suitable products—supermarkets don't exactly abound with soft drink syrups. This Web page describes one approach to finding and using alternative carbonated beverage flavorings. A SodaStream Jet, flanked by supplies: After sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle a SodaStream carbonated beverage maker, I became intrigued and bought one myself.

Although I'm pleased with the device overall, some of the claimed advantages of the SodaStream don't really pan out:. SodaStream's CO 2 cost estimates may be a bit optimistic. I got 53 liters from my first CO 2 cartridge, compared to the 60 claimed. Others online report getting between about 30 and a bit over 60 liters. If you like your sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle very fizzy, you'll get fewer liters out of each cartridge, thus raising costs.

For non-diet drinkers, most non-diet flavors have fewer calories, thanks to the mix of sugar and sucralose SodaStream uses in them. These factors, along with the "fun" aspect of it, were enough to convince me to buy my SodaStream; but I also hoped to find a way to improve on those two more suspect items. That's what this page is about, with an emphasis on the flavor syrups. The SodaStream CO 2 canisters offer the most dramatic opportunity for cost savings.

I won't go into these products in detail, since their own Web sites do that. In brief, you can refill your SodaStream tanks or use non-SodaStream tanks via an adapter that you refill locally from the same CO 2 suppliers that deliver CO 2 to restaurants. Be cautious, though; you don't want to buy a product that will introduce contaminants into your CO 2or buy your CO 2 from an iffy source!

The payback period ranges from a few months to two or three years, depending on the level of soda consumption. In my opinion, it's not worth bothering with a CO 2 source swap if your household consumes less than 2 liters a day; that value puts the payback period in the 12—18 month range. Since the syrup is costlier than the CO 2it might seem that there's greater potential for cost savings there.

The SodaStream syrups, though, are not as badly overpriced as the CO 2. Some options I've considered, and in some cases tried, include the following:. If you've got a Primo Flavorstation, you can follow exactly the procedure described here, except that the Primo uses a sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle carbonating bottle, rather than the 1 liter size that's common with the SodaStream, so you'll need to halve the quantity of syrup you use to make your sodas.

If you do a Web search on "snow cone supplies" or a similar phrase, you'll find numerous suppliers, each of whom sells a dizzying number of products, mostly aimed at street-corner snow cone vendors. When you review these sites, you'll find you must choose between buying syrups vs. For citrus flavors, adding citric acid may be desirable. You can buy either syrups, which include sweeteners and must be diluted to about 1: For various reasons, I've opted to use concentrates:.

If you check the snow cone sites, they provide instructions for creating a "simple syrup" using a flavor sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle, sugar, and water.

If you were to follow these instructions, you'd have to dilute the result by about 1: Making a more concentrated syrup using any of several 0-calorie sweeteners is possible, but this is not easily done with sugar—it's just not possible to cram enough sugar into the 42 milliliter ml measure that SodaStream uses for its syrups.

Since I drink 0-calorie sodas, this issue doesn't concern me, but if you want to make sodas with nothing but sugar as the sweetener, you'll have to abandon the SodaStream 1: In the past couple of decades, the number of available sweeteners has exploaded. For purposes of this Web page, they fall into two categories:.

Many sweeteners you buy in grocery stores mix ingredients from both categories. For instance, Truvia contains both erythritol and rebaudioside A a powerful sweetener in stevia. Other grocery-store products based on high-intensity sweeteners include inactive ingredients. Such bulking-out is useful for people who want to use the sweetener for baking or even adding it to coffee or tea, but it is a detriment to soda-making, since it adds cost and makes it harder to fit the sweetener into the desired volume.

For these reasons, I've focused on high-intensity sweeteners in pure or highly refined forms. With the exception of stevia, all of these products carry the US FDA's approval for use as sweeteners, and stevia is approved as a dietary supplement.

Regulatory approval varies by country, of course. Table 1 summarizes the relative sweetness and prices of these sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle sweeteners, along with sugar for comparison. Because most products you buy in grocery stores are bulked out with inactive ingredients or low-intensity sweeteners, I've gone to eBay and other Internet sources to locate purer forms of these products. The Sweet 'n Low liquid is an exception to this rule; although a bit pricier than most, it's not unreasonable for use in sodas, if you can accept saccharin as a sweetener.

Most prices in Table 1 are sampled from eBay in January of For all except sugar and the Sweet 'n Low liquid, I chose quantities equivalent to about 50— sugar-pounds for determining the purchase size, and therefore the price. Read the product description carefully before buying. Many sellers deliver bulked-out, mixed, or partially refined products, which won't be as sweet as noted in Table 1.

Check the All About Sweeteners Web page for summary information about numerous other sweeteners. Most of these high-intensity sweeteners are so sweet that sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle quantities for a small test batch say, 1 liter of soda is awkward—for instance, you need just 0.

This is too small to measure with most kitchen scales. You can buy other sweeteners in liquid solution, too. You can make your own solution from any of these sweeteners, of course, but I don't know how long they'll keep in that form. The sweetness values given in Table 1 are approximate, and different sources provide slightly different estimates. I've used the values in this table for subsequent cost computations on this page, but you might want to adjust quantities to your own taste.

The Approximate Price per Sugar-Pound column gives the cost of the sweetener that's equivalent to a pound of sugar bought at a supermarket. If you're looking for the best deal, this is the column to watch. Some snow cone suppliers offer a sugar-free sweetening mix. I tried one, which was a combination of acesulfame-K, aspartame, and fillers.

It produced a geyser of foam when added to carbonated water and the resulting soda wasn't as sweet as I'd expected.

Turning attention to sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle flavor concentrates, a number of outfits sell these, in bottles ranging in size from 4 ounces to 1 gallon.

Given the dilution ratio of 1: Fortunately, the concentrate lasts a long time—one seller claims a 2-year shelf life, although the bottles I got from another are marked with an expiration date less than a year from the purchase date.

Ask about this detail before ordering if it's important to you! Those that mention it say their concentrates do not require refrigeration. Remember to order concentrate, not syrup! Unless of course you want to pay more for something that's ready-mixed and would have to be mixed sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle your soda at a 1: I've checked product offerings from several suppliers some of which also seem to be manufacturers, although some clearly aren'tand ordered from five.

The eight I've researched are:. Judging the flavor of a snow cone syrup from its name can be tricky. Some are obvious, but some aren't—what's "Batman" or "Shrek? Hawaii's Finest here, Ralph's here, and Snow Wizard's here move your mouse pointer over a flavor name to see its description.

Note that no flavor could reach 10 points in my test because of the off flavors of the artificial sweeteners I used. Also, I have no doubt that sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle snow cone concentrates all use artificial sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle that can't match their natural counterparts—but some are pretty good nonetheless. As a comparison, most national-brand diet flavors Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, etc.

Sweetened with sugar, some would rate a If you're a stickler for real sugar taste, you might want to drop a point or two on my ratings, unless of course you plan to use sugar in your own mixes. Of course, descriptions can sometimes be imperfect. I have by no means tested all the available flavors, but some I have tried, including my ratings on a point scale and, when applicable, comparison to SodaStream flavors, are:.

Every supplier I checked carries various traditional soda flavors, including cola, orange, lemon-lime universally colored greenand grape.

Most carry root beer and cream soda. One Ralph's carries a flavor they claim resembles Dr. None that I found carries anything they claimed resembles Mountain Dew, although all have a few citrus flavors, and perhaps a mix starting with lemon could get close to the right taste. All have numerous flavors that are rare sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle sodas, such as apple, banana, spearmint, and watermelon.

Some, such as cake, bubble gum, and chocolate flavors, are very far off the carbonated beverage flavor mainstream—but you can always try them if you're curious!

Citric acid is a naturally-occurring substance that produces a sour flavor. It's common in citrus fruits, among other foods. I've found that many of the snow cone concentrates for citrus flavors lemon-lime and orange typically lack the sour citrus flavor, tasting more like citrus-flavored candy than citrus-flavored sodas.

Adding a small amount of citric acid can sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle the taste and feel of the soda. There may also be a benefit to using it in at least some non-citrus-fruit flavors, such as cola. In my tests, the amount of citric acid required to produce the desired results is quite small—about 0. Costs per gram go down for larger quantities, of course. As with sweeteners, eBay is a convenient way to find sellers of citric acid, although I'm sure other sources are available.

I've seen sweet n low liquid 8 oz bottle that some grocery stores sell it as "sour salt," often in the kosher or canning supplies aisle, but my local grocery stores don't have it. I've also been told that it's used in Middle Eastern cooking, and so can be found in markets catering to such cuisine.

Some snow cone vendors sell citric acid, with the intent that it be combined with sodium benzoate for a preservative effect on sugar-based syrups.

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